For ardent collectors of Eltoniana only.
Straightforward biography of Sir Elton John, master of rock piano and camp performance.
Part Mona Lisa and part Mad Hatter, John astounded his parents with his child-prodigy skills at the piano at the age of 3 and, early on, took his talents and ran with them. Whether that adds up to his being “the most remarkably beloved rock and pop artist of rock history,” as Bego (Eat Like a Rock Star: More Than 100 Recipes From Rock 'n' Roll's Greatest, 2017, etc.) writes, is surely debatable. The remark is suggestive of the tossed-off way in which the author treats a subject who deserves deeper consideration. It’s inarguable that John turned his skills as a pianist and crowd-pleasing showman to materially impressive ends, earning and spending millions of dollars while working his way through trauma and “looking for love in all the wrong places.” Bego, who has authored biographies of Tina Turner, Cher, Billy Joel, and others, covers all the familiar ground: John’s lifelong musical partnership with Bernie Taupin; the dazzling costumes and improbable acrobatics onstage; the friendships with Lady Diana and, for that matter, Ru Paul; the decades of decadence; the generosity to charity; the dawning realization that his habits, as John put it, had made him “a piano-playing Elvis Presley”; and the willful recovery. An effort to tie the book to the unrelated movie Rocketman yields only the observation that Elton John can now add “cinematic hero” to his resume. Philip Norman’s Elton John (1992), albeit slightly updated in reissue, cuts off three decades ago; even so, it is by far the better book, digging deeper into John’s life and work. Bego’s book is filled with glancing chapter titles (“Glitter and Be Gay”) and painful turns of phrase (“Whatever he does, he does it one hundred and fifty percent, whether it is doing drugs, having wild parties, or alphabetizing his CD collection”). In the end, this biography is an exercise in superficiality, about as muscular as a handshake from Andy Warhol, who “would present his hand like he had just handed you a dead chicken.”
For ardent collectors of Eltoniana only.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-64-313313-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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